Twitter scraps ‘government-funded media’ tag on public broadcasters
thestar.com
thestar.com
Twitter had a longstanding feature to help identify government mouthpieces that was working fine.
Musk either under pressure from those powers or just to score own-the-lob points started adding the tag to loved cherished public institutions like NPR and The Guardian, which have longstanding & sifndicisnt editorial freedom protections & don't make sense for this label.
Rather than do the right thing, Musk just cancels the safeguard entirely. Takes his ball & bat, tells everyone to go home.
Ideally, they would have made a rule saying that if more than N% of funding came from government sources and/or government officials have the power to appoint or remove board members or employees, it's labeled as state-affiliated media.
The test isn't about funding. That's poor spirited. The test is about journalistic independence. NPR and the Guardian ought be hallmark leaders by any metric one could make worth a salt.
I think the ability to withhold funding can be a powerful tool for governments to influence the journalism they fund. I think that's why governments fund journalism. It's at least a risk factor, and it makes the organization state-affiliated by definition.
I don't think it's unreasonable to worry about NPR thinking about how their editorial decisions will affect the government's continued willingness to give them money. I'm not saying that NPR is actually thinking about that, but it's a risk that people should keep in mind when they consume the content.
Leaving funding aside, my comment was mainly referring to state media such as CBC and BBC. I fail to see why they should not get the same label as their non-western equivalents. The BBC is not even really pretending to be independent anymore, and while I don't know anything about CBC's journalism, the fact that their board is appointed (and can be removed) by the Canadian government means that they are not independent of the Canadian government.
I don't know what you refer to regarding the Guardian. As far as I know, no one labeled them state media.
Ideally you'd want to validate that the features you're implementing are features that people (or organisations) are going to like. Right? Is that crazy?
Eventually there either won't be any guests left or no one will want to eat dinner with him because they heard about what happened last time.